Dadlands: Cam Ranh Bay

Our first stop on our way up the coast was Cam Ranh, only we didn't stop there. There wasn't enough time, partly because I had given my knee a good whack in a fall at Angkor Wat and wanted to get it checked out at the international clinic in Da Nang. (No worries; it was just a bad bruise and is well on its way to recovery.)

I was ambivalent about Cam Ranh anyway, because honestly, Dad never had anything nice to say about it.


This is still a dreary place even though they have added on an entirely new kitchen. I don't really know what it is about this place but there is something that makes it less than pleasant. It is the poorest place that I know of in Vietnam.

I did have enough time to snap a picture of the naval base as we flew past it on the bus.

There's a monument, too.

Happily, "air power" is taking on a completely new meaning on this part of the coast.

Burma-bound!

We're off to Myanmar a.k.a Burma early tomorrow morning. I'm not sure how much internet access we'll have, so I've set up the next few posts to go up automatically. After that perhaps I can update from wherever we are. Nauq twe dhe da paw! ("see you later" in Burmese)

Shwedagon pagoda, Yangon (Photo: http://tourism.goldenlandpages.com)

Entering the Dadlands

So, as you know if you've read as far back as Udon Thani, part of the rationale behind this trip to Vietnam was to go to some of the places my Dad talked about in his letters home in 1967-8 during the war. If you start in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), swing east to the coast and work your way up, you can bag quite a few Dad towns: Cam Ranh Bay, Tuy Hoa, Danang, Hue, Quang Tri, Dong Ha. So that's what we decided to do.

I guess this is as good a time as any to say a few words about my father, for those of you who are not my siblings, haha.

Dad was a career Air Force guy. He flew fighter planes in Korea. Then he got married and had five kids, the youngest of whom -- me -- was in diapers when he got assigned to fly fighters in Vietnam. He promptly swapped assignments with a colleague, which doesn't even seem like it should be possible, if you ask me. I mean, you can trade military postings the way third-graders trade sandwiches in the lunchroom? Anyway, he traded fighter planes for the less glamorous duty of flying enormous C-130 cargo planes so he would have a better chance of coming back to us alive.

How did he feel about the war? I hesitate to extrapolate much from the letters, because he died several years ago and isn't here to explain them himself. Furthermore, they were a) subject to military censorship and b) designed to be positive in order to keep my Mom's spirits up. But I can highlight a few things:

He was a product of his era and saw Asians as different from Westerners. Here's what he wrote about the orphanage he visited in Udon Thani:
 
We have it so good in the States that it's impossible to imagine the plight of these people. The Bishop will only allow Catholic couples to adopt the children because Thai couples of other sects and religions might make slaves of the children. That sounds unbelievable but in a nutshell I think it embodies their attitude toward life. No wonder we can't understand the East.  -- June 10, 1968, Udon Thani

On the other hand, he never demonized or dehumanized the other side. Here's what he writes about picking up a load of prisoners in Qui Nhon:

The prisoners were mostly North Vietnamese and were the most pathetic bunch I have ever seen. Many of them were just kids. They sure looked scared and I felt sorry for them. One of the prisoners had only one leg and was reputed to have killed 50 Marines. Some of the guys were angry with him because of it. Maybe it was wrong of me, but I wasn't angry with him -- I was sorry for him. He was only doing his job just like our own people do. It isn't his fault that he did it well. It just points up the ultimate stupidity of war.  -- October 9, 1967,  Tuy Hoa

He did not revel in the alleged glories of war. By the time I was old enough to remember, he never told war stories. He didn't pressure us to join the military -- although he couldn't possibly have been prouder when my brother graduated from the Air Force Academy. Here’s what he wrote at the end of a stint near the DMZ, where mortars and light arms fire were a nightly occurrence:

War is not a part of my nature and I feel sorry for the poor guys who live through this kind of thing day and night. I hope they are better equipped for it than I.  Dec. 14, 1967, Saigon

I think Vietnam made him more cautious about the use of military force. And I think greater exposure to other cultures softened his view of divisions between nations. Toward the end of his life he tutored kids at our local high school, many of whom were immigrants from all over the world. He also mentored kids from various backgrounds at our church Youth Group. I think he welcomed the chance to make up for the tragedy of the war in some way.

Anyway, that’s my Dad as I remember him. Perhaps my siblings would like to chime in? Sadly, I don’t even  have a picture with me to post. Just imagine a guy with a flat-top haircut working on our family’s motley assortment of second-hand cars on a Saturday afternoon, with just the family dog for company. Or imagine him showing my brother how to fix engines, or going to my sister’s flute performances, or single-handedly getting me through high school Physics despite my nightly fits of tears.

That’s my Dad. I can almost see him now.

Puppets on a pond

I was in a lousy mood when we got to the water puppet show. I was tired and hungry and sweaty, and we'd been walking around a Saigon park for at least 40 minutes searching for the exceedingly well-hidden puppet theatre.

But it was hard not to be won over by two birds engaged in a courtship dance ...

or a dragon boat full of powerful men setting out to sea ....

Or a set of dancing ladies turning in unison.

Water puppetry was devised in North Vietnam as a rice-paddy entertainment. As with Indonesian shadow puppets, it also serves the ritual role of appeasing the spirits and engendering harmony. A small group of musicians provides the accompaniment and also supplies narratives and voices.

The grand finale was a fire-spitting dragon, which also sprayed water over the audience. Rawrrr!

Cool, baby

In Saigon, the women wear floppy hats, masks, dark glasses and even cotton gloves to protect themselves from the sun. And so, by extension, do their babies.

Full-on Saigon

Saigon is not the kind of city that lies around waiting to be discovered. Saigon grabs you by the throat and demands attention.

The instant we stepped off the bus from Phnom Penh, a guy with a little bottle of glue was trying to fix Chad's sneakers (which were, in fact, badly in need of repair). Half an hour later, when I set out on the search for a guesthouse, a guy came up to me and bellowed "CHEAP ROOM EIGHT DOLLAR." He led me down a little alley where I walked through various families' living rooms -- TVs blaring, kids squabbling -- and climbed up narrow spiral staircases to examine their rental rooms.

Down another alley I decided to splurge on a small hotel with air conditioning and wifi. The room was so tiny, the door only opened partway before hitting the bed. But for $10, you can't expect lots of wasted space!

The intersecting network of alleys was a constant jumble of motorbikes, food sellers, kids playing, and people just hanging out. All the residents leave their front doors open in the hope of catching a cool breeze. You can walk down the alley and see what everyone's watching on TV and eating for dinner.

It's hard to square all this commercial activity with the idea that Vietnam is a Communist state. It couldn't be more different from the USSR in the late 1980s,  where I spent four months as a student. There, everything for sale (and it wasn't much) was gray or brown and shaped like a box. The common refrain was "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us." Saigon is a riot of shapes and colors, and everyone seems to be working around the clock ... even those who look too young to hold down a job.

X-Men for Boss

X-Men for Boss may be perfumed, but it is definitely a guy's shampoo. You can tell by the ass-kicking name, the masculine brown color and most especially, the nubbly little dots on the side of the bottle. As you will recall from our previous exploration of Watchout Soap, there is nothing more manly than nubblies.

PS: Don't forget to brush your teeth.